Boris Johnson rejects calls to scrap immigration health surcharge for foreign NHS workers

In a tense exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions today, where the Prime Minister joked about Sir Keir’s "brilliant forensic mind" and accused him of "ignorance", Mr Johnson said the Labour leader should “abandon his slightly negative tone”.

But Sir Keir said that 34,000 deaths from coronavirus was negative and that he was right to ask about it.

It came after Speaker Lindsay Hoyle suggested the Health Secretary Matt Hancock may want to leave the Commons after he was heckling Sir Keir during PMQs.

The Speaker told Mr Hancock: "I don't mind you advising the Prime Minister, but you don't need to advise the opposition."

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When Mr Hancock appeared to answer back, Sir Lindsay said: “Sorry do you want to leave the chamber? We’re on maximum numbers, if you want to give way to someone else I’m more than happy.”

Mr Johnson told the Commons the UK is now testing more “than virtually any country in Europe”.

He said: “Already 125,000 care home staff have been tested, perhaps he didn’t know that.”

He added: “We are absolutely confident that we will be able to increase our testing not just in care homes but across the whole of the community.

“And thanks to the hard work of my right honourable friend (Matt Hancock) and his teams we will get up to 200,000 tests in the country by the end of this month.

“Perhaps it is one of the statistics in international comparisons he hesitates to make but actually this country is now testing more than virtually any other country in Europe.”

But Sir Keir said: “The number of Covid-19 deaths in Germany stands at around 8,000, in South Korea it is under 300, in contrast, the United Kingdom, despite two million tests having been carried out – there has been no effective tracing in place since March 12 when tracing was abandoned.

“That is nearly 10 weeks in a critical period without effective tracing. That is a huge hole in our defences, isn’t it Prime Minister?”

Mr Johnson replied that he is “confident” that the UK will have a test-and-trace operation which will allow the country to make “progress”.

“And I can tell him also that by June 1, already we have recruited 24,000 trackers and by June 1 we will have 25,000.

“They will be capable of tracking the contacts of 10,000 new cases a day,” Mr Johnson said.

Mr Johnson later rejected calls to make changes to the immigration health surcharge for overseas NHS workers, telling the Commons: “I’ve thought a great deal about this and I do accept and understand the difficulties faced by our amazing NHS staff and, like him, I’ve been a personal beneficiary of carers who have come from abroad and, frankly, saved my life.”

He added: “On the other hand we must look at the realities – this is a great national service, it’s a national institution, it needs funding and those contributions actually help us to raise about £900m, and it’s very difficult in the current circumstances to find alternative sources.

“So with great respect to the point (Sir Keir Starmer) makes, I do think that is the right way forward.”

Labour leader Sir Keir said he was “disappointed” as the PM knows “how raw” the issue is, adding the surcharge is currently £400 a year and will increase to £624 from October.

“For a care worker on the national living wage that will require working for 70 hours to pay off the fee,” he said.

Sir Keir said Labour would table an amendment to the Immigration Bill to exempt NHS and care workers from the charge now that Mr Johnson had dismissed the call to reconsider his view.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford also criticised the Government’s treatment of health care workers in its immigration legislation.

He told the Commons: “On Monday, the Prime Minister ordered his MPs to vote for a Immigration Bill that defines many in the NHS and care sector as ‘low-skilled workers’. Given their sacrifice, Prime Minister, is he not embarrassed that this is how his Government chooses to treat NHS and care workers?”

Mr Johnson responded: “This is a Government that values immensely the work of everybody in our National Health Service, in our care workers and across the whole community.

“And I can tell him the reason for having an Immigration Bill of the kind that we are is not to keep out people who can help our NHS, on the contrary, we want an immigration system that works for the people of this country and works for our NHS.

“And I think what the people of this country want to see is an immigration system where we control it and we understand it and we are able to direct it according to the needs of our NHS and the needs of our economy and that’s what we’re putting in place.”

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